with a hint of ginger and lime! My breakfast today. Ever since I was a kid I couldn't understand how someone could ruin a perfectly good strawberry pie by adding something as tart as rhubarb to it. Hated rhubarb ever since that ill-fated pie until last year. My tastes have changed a lot since I was a kid (I used to think chicken was gross!) and especially so in the last few years. I decided to give rhubarb another try. WOW. Boy am I in for a treat the rest of my life. Even went so far as to get a rhubarb tart in Paris. Dang. Amazing fruit fabulousness in my mouth and tummy. Does fruit get better than this in tart form? I decided to find out. Bought rhubarb for the first time yesterday and whipped up a compote because it sounded more fun than pie filling. The only thing I changed was mashing up the cooked fruit a bit (chunks were too big for little pies) and added some corn starch to thicken a little. It made a ton and now I have to figure out what to do with it all because even after filling four hand pies I have probably 6-8 cups left. Maybe a pie for work... The filling is so delicious that I was tempted to eat my wooden spoon so as to not lose any of the sweet, red nectar that had soaked into the grain. In my supreme laziness (and inability to do pie crust well) I went to the store and spent a fortune on pre-made, pre-rolled, non-evil ingredient pie dough. Such a delight and much less work. Totally worth it. I assembled my little beauties with my new toy, et voila!
Still trying to book a cooking class for my groupon. Hopefully will have more luck in August. Going for an artisan flavored bread class this time.
Participated (i.e. watched someone else) put a lid back on to the APE cache. It was fun to meet other people with my odd hobby and my car was finally discovered on the road! Yippee!
In its new home. :)
Am determined to ride my bike to work this week. It wouldn't be so difficult if I weren't a wimp when it came to my hill that I live on. It's going to happen!
Need a bigger place. Got to have some storage to keep my beloved stuff. Still miss my Bothell apt. It was great. In the spirit of that apartment I am trying to lure birds still to this one. The weather has been so hot lately that almost all the suet has melted out of the feeder! I got excited one day when I saw the composition was different and I thought I'd had a visitor pecking away. But then I saw the ginormous grease stain underneath it on the balcony railing and now I know better. Took the plant off the bird feeder (makes a great stand when the birds aren't around!) and filled it with water. Hopefully the little guys will see the shimmer and come down to investigate.
Couldn't find a small tomato cage so I jury-rigged one of my own with twine and plastic plant stakes. So far so good and hopefully it will continue to bear the burden of those juicy fruits. When I have a place where I can drill my own holes with reckless abandon I'm going to get an upside down pot for tomatoes. Then I won't have to worry about supporting it so much and it will look neat.
Was hoping to start playing with tofu soon given one of my latest cookbook purchases but am running into a small problem. The bigger problem is that I don't like substitutes and will exhaust all other purchase options of the original before succumbing to the substitute. Right now I'm on the hunt for pressed tofu (the small problem). I won't spend too much time on it because I found that I can press firm tofu like you dry an agarose gel, namely putting absorbent things like paper towels on top, then a flat tray and then some weight. I'd rather just buy the stuff but it's nice to know there is an easy (though time consuming) alternative.
Torturing myself with windermere.com lately looking at waterfront vacation homes for under 200k. There are actually quite a few. Unfortunately most of them are mobile homes. Not sure exactly why so many water views are populated with mobile homes. Digging this A-frame though. Totally diggin on this super fabulous party site. Trouble would definitely getting people up there though. Too many of my friends think a ten mile trip is going to a foreign country.
Some day. For now my beach house will remain in my head where it is perfect and no recession, salary, or reality can touch it.
1 comment:
I love that you now love rhubarb! I saw fields of it on Saturday, and want to plant my own. :-) The A-frame looks lovely, and it has lavendar in the garden. Did the Buckmoon hike last night, lots of people, nice bunch, friendly and shared food, someone actually carried a watermelon up the hill! :-)
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